


Spark

by Lafeae



Series: Whump/Hurt/Comfort challenge [11]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Chronic Pain, Drinking to Cope, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Whump, original - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-18 12:29:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18249866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lafeae/pseuds/Lafeae
Summary: Li Nguyen has been dealing with pain in his leg for seventeen years, but some nights are worse than others.His coping could use some work....





	Spark

**Author's Note:**

> Hello to all of my Yu-Gi-Oh! Peeps who might be reading this. 
> 
> Chronic pain was the prompt for this, and I didn’t think I couldn’t actually think of anything for the fandom, so I wrote something original based on an RP. Enjoy.

When the sun set in Hong Kong, the city awoke. It's nightlife hustled brightly, it's towers illuminated in a rainbow of colours and flourish until the façades moved and danced to the Symphony of Lights. They made it easy to drown out worry or concern as it beckoned people deep into the deeming trenches of barely moveable streets and new-age infrastructure. The tourists and the outdoor vendors, yelling loudly and capriciously while they stirred noodles and clapped their hands, knew nothing about the kinds of things that were happening under their feet.

The world was changing.

Behind the tall and beautiful edifices, mouths moved and papers shuffled, preparing the world for the be all, end all of tectonic shifts. Where money, power, and information were all going to share the same surface. The swipe of a tablet, or a badge, or a watch was all it was going to take. Every detail linked to a fingerprint of a retina scan. Hell, even a face.

Li Nguyen didn't know how they didn't know. Maybe the beautiful skyline had tricked them. Hong Kong was a state of mind. Precariously stuck in between between old world and new ideals, a border where east met west in the most cliché sort of descriptor. For those that were looking for a way to ease into the eventual culture shock, Hong Kong had a way of hypnotising people into a sense of ease. And really, if you weren't there on business, that was the point.

But Li was there on business. More specifically, he'd moved there for business four months ago and would remain there, at least until the wedding.

He sighed. "Stop the car."

The sleek town-car broke out of traffic and parked midway up a busy street. He was a block away was from a tall, twinkling building whose front had rose petals raining over the silhouette of curvaceous, beckoning beauties called to him. The Lotus.  

Soon.

Planting his cane first, Li heaved out of the car.

"Are you sure, Mr. Nguyen?" The driver asked.

"Yes, thank you."

"But the Mistress said...!"

Li dug in his pocket and handing over a colourful array of banknotes, thumbing down to the golden bills waded in the centre. He opened up the front passenger door and leaned over the leather seats, passing them to the driver.

"Go have fun. I'll be a while."

The money was snatched up immediately. The driver licked his fingers and counted the bills. He nodded vehemently, but Li knew, no matter how much money he handed over, that this would still be reported back to Fayola. The Mistress. The Princess. The Bride-to-Be. Maybe it would buy him an hour or two, though. Which was enough for a stroll and aimless sight seeing.

He began to long walk to towards The Lotus, taking the same careful and steady steps he always did, keeping in queue with the faster legs in front of him. His pace was even, and his footing sound, but it was never about that. It was about the pain that shot through him at random intervals and made him hear cymbals crashing over the sharp throes of Cantonese, Mandarin, and the deep-bass rhythm of live music being played somewhere adjacent to him. Coins still shook in his pocket, maybe he would visit the musician.

When the pain dissipated for a few fleeting moments, he picked up the pace and made it to a corner stall. Steam rose out from beneath moist, navy blue banners likely soaked through with the grease and oil from the egg waffles.

Artfully, one of the cooks twirled a long string of chocolate sauce over the puffy fried batter balls and handed them off wrapped in paper. A hawker was in Li's face shouting, "Stop staring. You scare people!" before smiling and quickly wrapping up one of the pastries. "One or two?"

"Three," Li replied.

"Three!" The hawker laughed. "No eyes on you tonight?"

Li shrugged and handed over the last of the bills in his pocket. "There's always eyes. I just...had a craving."

"Mm. That bad, huh?" asked the hawker, pointing towards Li's legs. Li didn't answer, holding the warm pastries in his hands before lifting them back up, where the cook drizzled chocolate sauce on them. "Must be that bad. You ever think to drink instead?"

Li snorted. "I'll be back."

"I know! You keep me in business!"

The egg waffles were torn into as Li walked. The pain was flaring up again, pulsing from his knee and shooting down to his foot until the toes were numb. Wonderful. They couldn't bother him with anymore than a tingle that way. It left him leaning against the cane to combat the sensation of the muscle in his knee constantly tightening, or his thigh muscle ready to burst out from beneath the skin. The less pressure, the better.

Eventually, he made it to The Lotus and stared up at its infinitely high billboard front. Most people didn’t notice that just behind the pixels, patrons danced in the dim windows, unaware how apparent their shadows were in the glass. Especially the very round breasts suctioned on again, off again, from the fourth floor while the person behind her shimmied herpanties off. The light in the room flicked off after that, but Li was sure he could make out the smear where her breasts had been.

Two egg waffles were chomped through to the hard edges. The third was cooling against his hand. He didn't want it—it was too much for one person—but he knew in twenty or thirty minutes, his brain wouldn't care what his stomach did or didn't want. He was going to get that plastered and probably throw up.

That was the only way to get through the pain. 

Chocolate sauce was wiped from his mouth as he stepped through a side door, nodding to the bouncer who barely glanced at him while others complained. Inside, the dim lights flickered, and the entire room beat to a terrible, autotuned rhythm that could have taken some notes from the street performer that he'd forgotten about.

"Mr. Nguyen!" A woman with too much eye make-up approached him, her long lashes batting. She took his arm. "Come to join the party? Kitty's here! She's just climbed on a table and—!"

"Just the bar, thanks."

Fluttering her big lashes, the woman looked down at the egg waffle and licked her lips. He broke off a piece and handed it to her, watching her devour it behind her hand. If it went to her wide hips, it wouldn't hurt her any.

"You need ChangChang?" Big Lashes asked.

"Always."

She pivoted on the stiletto heels and walked him to the elevator, stealing bites of the egg waffle the entire way. Maybe that was the price for this service. A pretty girl as a crutch wasn't such a bad thing. She gave a good lap dance, too, when he was sitting. Looking into her big, often glittering lashes made him ignore almost everything just so he had a moment to himself.

But she left him at the empty VIP bar, waving goodbye as she stole the last of the egg waffle.

Li dropped into one of the barstools and used both hands to pull his leg up onto the low bar. His toes were the only thing saved from the rippling pain that, even as he rested, refused to subside. He spent a few moments steading his breath and rubbing his thigh between both hands.

He focused on the bay in the distance. A perfect location for a luxurious high-rise club, and especially perfect for the VIP lounge, where the elite could sip their VSOP and Remy while looking out at the lights twinkling on the choppy water like submerged fireworks.

The back door slammed open, drawing his attention to the wall of liquor lit up by a bright backlight.

"You again?" The shrill voice belonging a tall, lithe woman, asked. Her long hair was oiled back, and big curls were pinned above her forehead and ears. The sharp make-up around her eyes and bold-lined lips contrasted the blue tracksuit she sported. He must have caught her getting ready for the night. "I should charge you rent."

"Booze is worth more."

"Ha, as if you pay."

Li rolled his eyes and braced the bar, shifting his weight to the right side. "Nice to see you too, ChangChang."

The woman scoffed. "What you want?"

"Usual. Double, if you could."

Bottles clanked together, and Li buried his face in his hands for a few seconds while he gathered his breath.

One, two, three, stretch out the knee. Four, five, six, swing it back. Seven, eight, nine, straighten the back. Wash, rinse, repeat, and hold his leg out as long as he was physically able, until the muscles burned and his knee cried for relief. Tingling returned to his toes, not that he wanted it. He'd give anything for his knee and calf to stop pulsating. Not that it would, it never had, but there was a faraway hope that it might.

Because sometimes the pain dulled. Under the right circumstances, it dulled to a whisper and he forgot about its existence. That thinking led him down the slippery slope of believing that if he replicated the exact circumstances when it dulled—if he moved the right way, sat the right way, acted the right way—that it would go away. The worst part was that it sometimes worked. Always sometimes. Just enough to make him do it again and again, living in the same loop, and the same lie, that his pain could be cured.

Wishful thinking.

Nothing had changed in seventeen years. Li knew he was a fool for thinking it would change, but pain wasn't logical. It drilled into that part of his brain that made him foolish, happily misinformed, and hopeful that if he just _got this right!_ he could prove the illogical. That he could help himself and everyone else plagued with the dark, transporting thoughts and feelings (and actions, he murmured to himself when alone, when no one was listening to him and there was a block of knives in the other room, but they required walking to get to) and be the miracle for someone else.

"Hey, no passing out on the bar," ChangChang said. She sat a glass down in front of him.

Li's grimace fluttered into a tight smile. "Not passing out. I haven't even drank yet."

"I'm gonna charge you extra when you do."

"I'm not going to."

ChangChang snorted. "Be a first."

The liquor was thrown back. People always described a burn, but he never felt it anymore. He hardly even remembered what it felt like to begin with. For a second, he lingered with his eyes to the ceiling while the first drink impacted into his brain. Only...he didn't know how many more...to go.

"Oh, we're self-indulgent today, I see." ChangChang clicked her tongue. "Don't try telling me answers to universe. I don't care, okay? Got enough of those to make book from."

"I don't have any answers."

"Yet."

Li slid the empty glass towards her. "Only one way to find out."

"I said 'not interested'. Keep that shit to yourself," ChangChang said. The glass was taken.

In the time it took for ChangChang to refill it, Li's attention drifted towards doors at the far side of the bar, where flashing lights beat to a rhythm. If he closed his eyes, he could hear people laughing, screaming, and recklessly enjoying themselves. Girls would jump into boy's arms and swing around the room to the rapid-fire mix of songs he was too old to give a damn about. Someone, somewhere, was getting busy before paying for a girl or booking a room. To each their own.

There was a time that that was him. When, underneath the ultraviolet lights and shimmer glow, he lost all sense of space and time. When his only idea of where his curly-haired, five foot nothing ball of fierce and stubborn Goddess was was by following the soft hush of her voice and the warm trails of her fingertips on his back.

She always got him into messes. Pushed his boundaries; mentally, emotionally, sexually. She left him with humid memories of laying in the sands of a beach in the Philippines after a day-long binge of self-discovery with one Guillermo ("call me Gil," he had purred) while she watched on and eventually joined because she was a little selfish and impatient. She would deny it ever happened when Li teased her for it.

A stab of pain thrust through his knee. He'd leaned too forward in his daydream  and cursed to himself as he slipped off the stool.

ChangChang wasn't looking at him. In that moment of white-hot pain, he reached across the bar and grabbed the bourbon bottle she'd left out.

"Hey, you! Stop that."

"Put it on the tab," Li said. He grabbed a short-stemmed glass and poured until the bourbon sloshed over the rim. Just so he wasn't drinking straight from the bottle. "I'm sure it's appropriately overpriced."

ChangChang was silent. The bourbon was sipped on long and slow. Li didn't come up to breathe until it was empty, too focused on the colourful door. When he finished, his ears were a little warm. More out of worry than from the drink, because he knew he wasn't a lightweight. Not anymore.

It was refilled again. Scrutinising eyes were on him, but after two or three more drinks, ChangChang's quizzicalness, or maybe it was disgust, would go away. Everything would go away. Everything but the pain, but he would be in a good place then. He would slip into that dull, almost normal, feeling that he remembered long ago. If he remembered it. He thought he knew what it felt like to not be in pain.

"I'll tell her you're here," ChangChang threatened after the third, or was it fourth, fill of his glass.

Li snorted. "Fuck Fayola. She knows where I am."

"Not her, dipshit."

"Masiko?" Li asked, lips puckering.

"Yes."

"Is she here?"

"Yes. And I tell her you're being stupid."

"What else is new?"

ChangChang crossed her arms. "I call in your 'tab'."

"Do it."

"I will."

The glass was slammed on the bar. "Do it! Make her come out here."

God, the pain was blinding. The very thought of his Goddess strolling through that door and looking him up and down, seeing him wavering as he put all of his weight on his bad leg just to test how many more drinks it was going to take to make it go away, was embarrassing. Not that she hadn't seen him shit-faced, passed-out, wallowing in places that they shared with in ever long, intimate sessions of silence and touches. It was just different now. It lacked the intimate. The good kind of intimate, at least.

Intimate hate was a thing, too. For self, for others.

It made every detail so vivid, so precise, that no matter how much alcohol churned in him, Li could never escape the memories. The pain of the memories. No, the pain in his leg, not the memories.

ChangChang's lips pursed. "Go home."

"No."

"Now."

Li shook his head vehemently.

"You only make it worse on yourself, asshole. With Fayola or Masiko," ChangChang said. If it weren't for the soft lilt of concern in her voice, the gentle mothering instinct she had deep down in her, Li might have believed her despise. "Fucker."

"Yeah, I know."

ChangChang refilled the glass and took the bottle back. "I need to change. Don't fuck up my bar."

Li laughed to himself. He rested his forehead on his knit fingers. "I won't."

"Don't go through the door, either."

"...I won't," Li said, so soft that it might have been a thought.

ChangChang left, and he nursed the glass slowly while peeking at the door through his fingers. Despite ChangChang’s warning, he wanted to go through it. He wanted to search through the sweaty bodies and find his Goddess. He didn't need to hear her or see her, just feel her. He'd know Masiko by touch.

But he couldn't. His leg hurt too bad.

Or that's what he told himself.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to anyone who read. 
> 
> Tell me what you think :3


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